LV : Last Semester of Undergrad - Week 9

So, apartment buildings are all new-looking, having been painted over with various colors of poop-- healthy dark brown poop, diarrhea light brown poop, normal in-between colored poop. Yeah, great color choices. And though this is an update during break (week 10), the inside hallways are not blue-colored anymore, they're orangey-brown colored. It's easy to see the dirtiness of the floors now, but ah well, I'm not going to complain about the landlord's choices.

Tuesday's microbiology lab surprised me with some cuteness:

The tiny agar dish! Just to show bacterial transformation, but isn't it CUTE?!

Anyway, highlight of the week was Wednesday's (3.10) tour around Baxter, a pharmaceutical manufacturing company. The LA one dealt with proteins in human plasma, so we learned about how those proteins were fractionated and what these fractions look like. I got to see the packaging part and the quality management part. The latter one was more interesting to me since that's where most of the chemistry happens. They had rooms titled Biochemistry, Chemistry, and other sciencey-names I forget (Microbiology might have been one of them). The people worked to determine the efficiency of the fractions. Something like that. And to make sure that there weren't any foreign contaminants that could be potentially dangerous. For this trip, I dressed up, but I only remembered pictures after the tour. So here I am, in the bathroom before going to Physio lab. With the jacket:

Without the jacket:

The rest of the week was spent in anticipation for SPRING BREAK, which is ending too quickly!

LIV : Last Week of Undergrad - Week 8

yay, I'm finally done with studying until spring break. :) So, last week's events were to prepare for the first three days of this week (9). I made cucumber and meatball soup! And it was a success~ close to one at least. I had seen my dad make it before and for some reason, I had a craving for it last week (I wonder how cravings get started). So I bought cucumbers for the first time and ground beef for the first time as well. And I rolled the beef up with small chunks of purple onion and Memmi soy sauce. Then I dropped it in boiling water that had a chunk of ginger in it. After letting the meat cook a little, I put it on low heat and then added cucumber chunks cuz into U's. In the soup, I also added the small leftover can of chicken broth I had, but I don't think it did much because I still had to add soy sauce in the soup to make it taste. The good thing is, that after about three days (I made a big pot of this), the ginger taste got into the soup and I didn't have to add soy sauce to make the soup taste. :) Delicious.


Before I forget, I took this in the middle of Feb to remind me of how long my hair is:

and that's all for that one.

So, Monday was the dreaded Physio exam 2. I had to study about smooth muscle contractions, the pancreas, the hunger hormones, the thyroid gland, the GH stuff, calcium regulation, the adrenal gland stuff, and the reproductive system stuff. And here's one of my notes that scared me when I was studying:

So much writing! Reminds me of when I started taking notes like crazy way back in 8th grade science class. I have to thank Dr. Ricks for scaring me early on with how much knowledge science classes require us to learn. Seriously. I still can't believe how many bio classes I've taken that repeated the same information, yet I still have to relearn it each time. Yipes, I'm scared but excited to learn new pharmaceutical stuff in pharmacy school.

And, to wrap this week up, I have this: Wholeheartedly thank people for whatever they do that makes you a better you.
There's no way I can not think about the past from time to time. So it's impossible for me to forget those ties I had before but are no longer as strong now. I don't believe in the forget part of "forgive and forget."

LIII : Let Me Be Nerdy

Facebook led me to this wonderful chemistry-love shirt site. and I used about an hour going through many many images. I laugh, I laugh. But I'm sure after this year, I might not remember why I laughed because I might have forgotten everything. So sad to have knowledge no longer stick like before. I think the most clever one is the "Uracil-y person" with the uracil molecule drawn out. Clever clever.